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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:What's stopping Amazon from building a little room on to the front of their warehouses where the public can pick up an online order or browse Amazon.com at a touchscreen kiosk? There aren't very many of them either, they're just enormous and they serve very large areas. Amazon has 88 distribution centers in the entire US. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 07:27
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I imagine that even if it were feasible, Amazon would probably rather the customer gently caress off and shop at home.
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Dec 12, 2016 07:38
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They want to go after industrial logistics anyway 3PL / 4PL stuff.
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Dec 12, 2016 07:42
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Does anyone remember service merchandise? I guess it existed in some form till the early 2000s but does anyone remember it in the old days? There's also a place in the UK called Argos which is this.
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Dec 12, 2016 07:46
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:What's stopping Amazon from building a little room on to the front of their warehouses where the public can pick up an online order or browse Amazon.com at a touchscreen kiosk? The cost of building and staffing a retail or service area for the general public is a big expense compared to running a warehouse. Someone mentioned that warehouses are in non-consumer friendly areas. So you would probably, for a start, need to make the roads and parking area consumer friendly, and worry about the lost time and cost of freighting having to stop for cars. The entire parking and retail area needs to be designed for consumers, it needs to be staffed, it needs security, all of these costs add up. Basically it takes a lot of overhead to make a customer experience, and the returns seem to be pretty small.
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Dec 12, 2016 17:18
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Aldi is the light. Embrace Aldi.
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Dec 13, 2016 12:46
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Does anyone remember service merchandise? I guess it existed in some form till the early 2000s but does anyone remember it in the old days? Yes. Our family never ordered there because there were so many other places where you could get what you were looking for right away. The concept was/is really cool, but making a consumer come back later sucked. Amazon solved that issue by shipping it to your house for peanuts. ToxicSlurpee posted:Brick and mortar stores are also generally run on skeleton crews these days. Finding somebody to ask about where something is can take an unreasonable amount of time. A search bar on a website knows where everything is. Some places, like Home Depot and Target have apps that tell you where poo poo is in that store. Which is awesome. Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:What's stopping Amazon from building a little room on to the front of their warehouses where the public can pick up an online order or browse Amazon.com at a touchscreen kiosk? I think above everything else, its warehouses in places which are best suited for storing, shipping, and receiving goods, not for attracting customers. Not many people live near the intersection of Hwy 12 and Route 7 in Bumfuck, KS; it also is a terrible place for freestanding retail. However, it sure is really easy to get poo poo in and out of there.
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Dec 13, 2016 15:23
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Doctor Butts posted:Yes. Our family never ordered there because there were so many other places where you could get what you were looking for right away. Even though it was a business model that lasted almost 100 years it felt really half baked an idea. Like to this day it feels like it was a unique solution that could be good for something but it never really felt clear what problem it solved. Like it was a really novel way to run a store but a worse way.
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Dec 13, 2016 15:55
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It solved the problem of "I loving hate walking around stores looking for poo poo," and before express shipping was a thing, it was arguably the most elegant way of dealing with that problem, but now it's always going to be something of a relic. Even now, I prefer to make an order online or by phone, have it gathered together, and go pick it up in person, if I'm going to go to a local store (or if I have to, for things like booze which are illegal to ship and I don't want to deal with scheduling a delivery).
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Dec 13, 2016 16:17
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I get it, but that's really bothersome to me. Online sites for these stores are geared towards you ordering it online and having it shipped in some matter above everything else. They aren't designed for shopping your store. So you get sites like Best Buy or Wal-Mart where they're selling from a half a dozen different vendors and you may have to filter down 2 or 3 times just to find stuff that is available in stores, is in stock, in the store you want to go to. At that point, unless there's some reason I just can't go at the moment or I need to get a sale price on something- I just shop in person.
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Dec 13, 2016 16:22
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Doctor Butts posted:I get it, but that's really bothersome to me. Because if it's not available in stores, in stock, at the store I want to go to, I will go to shop in person, and discover that the product in question is not available, so I've just wasted a whole bunch of time walking or driving to the store in question, and I'm no closer to buying the thing I need.
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Dec 13, 2016 16:24
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Doctor Butts posted:Yes. Our family never ordered there because there were so many other places where you could get what you were looking for right away. Of all the big ticket stores that have been talked about in the thread, I feel like home depot and lowes are the ones that will probably be the most stable in the Amazon age if only because of contractor/construction business that runs through it. Their niche is one that really does benefit having a local physical presence rather than just ordering it and having a robot on the internet ship it to you two days later, especially if you're on a time sensitive project. Someone upthread had mentioned the disaster of Sears and I figured I'd touch on it some as someone who was a retail grunt there back in the immediate aftermath of the Kmart-Sears merger years between 2003-2006. First off, for anyone wondering how bad Sears got, here's a good primer: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie-lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles Choice pick: quote:The bloodiest battles took place in the marketing meetings, where different units sent their CMOs to fight for space in the weekly circular. These sessions would often degenerate into screaming matches. Marketing chiefs would argue to the point of exhaustion. The result, former executives say, was a “Frankenstein” circular with incoherent product combinations (think screwdrivers being advertised next to lingerie). My position in the store was an Orwellian title known as a Merchandise and Customer Assistance Associate for Hardlines (hardware, home & Garden, Appliances, and electronics). The MCA's job at least in my store was basically the middle man between the sales team, the stock and warehouse team, the marketing team, loss prevention, and the managers. I was effectively cross trained everywhere except the direct managerial duties, though if you asked my boss he would gleefully tell me that my job was "does what I tell him to do". It was an interesting position at the time because I was far enough removed from any specific department that I could see just how crazy dysfunctional everything was even before Eddie Lampert went full Ayn Rand on the company. Sales was the easy example to point at. The sales team was tempered even back then to be as mercilessly cutthroat as possible. If they were on the sales floor they made sub minimum wage baseline but they pulled commission. The commissions were weighted toward the bigger ticket items so they would make pretty good returns in electronics and appliances, but home and garden/hardware sales people had streaky returns depending on the day/shift. Something like a $3000 riding lawn mower/plasma television/refrigerator could bring them $100-200 depending on if they sold the maintenance agreement or extended warranty (side note, these were hilarious scams even back then: actually trying to call in service for these was like pulling teeth and they would look for any way to invalidate your claim), but selling a hammer or individual socket would bring them *maybe* 2 cents. Because Sales teams were divided into the Hardware/Lawn and garden group, the Electronics group, and the Appliances group, this led to situations where the hardware guys just stopped giving a gently caress about the small hand tools and the piddly commissions and just hung around L&G/sports pushing mowers and treadmills at best or at worst sneaking into appliances or electronics when someone wasn't looking to ring up a customer buying a television. This led to confrontations on several occasions that almost came to blows when people would call each other out. Because the hardware sales guys had so thoroughly abandoned the small tools isles for lack of commission and because we didn't have personal radios like they have in modern best buys and the like, the Loss Prevention team had special innocuous intercom codes, usually with made up names (Roger Moore pleas call ####) they rang if they needed me to go hang out in an isle because they though someone was going to try and snatch lithium batteries or small and easily concealable tools like socket wrench bits and bobs and make a run for it. The reasoning was as was mentioned upthread with Wal-Mart: Employee presence is a bigger detractor of shoplifting than anything. Naturally, this would lead to regular customers coming to me wanting to check out (because no official sales people were ever in sight). If I even thought about ringing someone up though, I'd have the derelict sales guys jumping down my throat because I wasn't commissioned even though they couldn't be bothered to walk their areas. The management during all of this was gleefully complacent, their official stance was 'look after customers in your department if you want to protect your commission' which only ever made the problem worse. Meanwhile this whole attitude was blatantly obvious to the customers, who seen this employee bickering and pushiness for what it was and actively bitched about it to anyone in the management chain who would listen to them, ultimately to no avail. Sears was basically doomed to fail before it went full Ayn Rand.
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Dec 13, 2016 19:51
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:What's stopping Amazon from building a little room on to the front of their warehouses where the public can pick up an online order or browse Amazon.com at a touchscreen kiosk? they have the amazon locker system in a few places. not directly from the warehouse, but probably speedy enough.
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Dec 15, 2016 19:43
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PT6A posted:EDIT: And then, even when it's -25 with wind chill outside, they keep the store at a toasty 23 degree, so if you're wearing suitable clothing to actually reach the store without freezing, you have roughly a 70% chance of showing up to the checkout drenched in sweat and/or dying of heatstroke once you've finished wandering all around hell's half acre looking for the things on your shopping list. And you get the knowledge that you're paying extra so they can keep the store so warm, and at the very same time, keep their chilled items cold. Wonderful! You can take your coat off and put it in the cart. It's ok, I promise no one will laugh at you.
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Dec 15, 2016 21:39
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duz posted:You can take your coat off and put it in the cart. It's ok, I promise no one will laugh at you. Yea. Heatstrokin' it is only a problem in malls that don't have lockers.
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Dec 15, 2016 21:41
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Doctor Butts posted:Yea. Heatstrokin' it is only a problem in malls that don't have lockers. where the gently caress do you live that malls have customer-facing lockers
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Dec 15, 2016 21:47
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Cease to Hope posted:where the gently caress do you live that malls have customer-facing lockers At least one mall in Ohio has them.
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Dec 15, 2016 21:50
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Cease to Hope posted:where the gently caress do you live that malls have customer-facing lockers They're pretty common, man.
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Dec 15, 2016 21:51
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I forgot another option is to buy something small at the mall but get a bag big enough to stuff your coat in. Sure, you can also bring a store bag from home but that's kind of tacky and people might think you're shoplifting.
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Dec 15, 2016 21:54
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Getting off break, so I don't have time to read through the thread yet, but I heard on House of Cards of all places that Walmart is de facto subsidized by the government because they pay workers so little/give them so few hours they qualify for assistance. Is that true?
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Dec 15, 2016 22:37
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Yes.
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Dec 15, 2016 22:57
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Mister Macys posted:Getting off break, so I don't have time to read through the thread yet, but I heard on House of Cards of all places that Walmart is de facto subsidized by the government because they pay workers so little/give them so few hours they qualify for assistance. Yes, Walmart (and McDonalds for that matter) dedicate HR resources to help it's employees get government assistance because they knowingly don't pay enough or give enough hours to break people out of the poverty level and use government programs to fill the gap. Walmart then specifically and helpfully also encourages their employees to buy groceries from Walmart, hence directly benefiting from their employee's SNAP assistance. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-11-13/how-mcdonald-s-and-wal-mart-became-welfare-queens
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Dec 15, 2016 23:05
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Mister Macys posted:Getting off break, so I don't have time to read through the thread yet, but I heard on House of Cards of all places that Walmart is de facto subsidized by the government because they pay workers so little/give them so few hours they qualify for assistance. Hilariously enough Walmart is against the cutting of SNAP benefits because some ridiculous portion of their profits comes from them.
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Dec 15, 2016 23:09
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Cease to Hope posted:where the gently caress do you live that malls have customer-facing lockers Every mall that I can remember has had lockers that people can use. Usually you have to pay for it to get the key, similar to airport lockers if you've seen those. What I usually do is just bring a backpack and then stuff my coat and stuff in there once I get in. A quarter to use a locker is basically highway robbery imo.
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Dec 16, 2016 00:54
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Thank you for the answers about my Amazon question. I guess I'm just such a Northeasterner that I don't truly understand the concept of "middle of nowhere".
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Dec 16, 2016 01:12
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Thank you for the answers about my Amazon question. I guess I'm just such a Northeasterner that I don't truly understand the concept of "middle of nowhere". It's called "Ohio".  Middle of nowhere: any place that's landlocked, without access to the Great Lakes or the oceans. Population density is irrelevant. (Yes, it's just my personal opinion, but I'll be damned if the city I live in is going to qualify as "somewhere")
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Dec 16, 2016 02:53
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Yeah same except the great lakes are still nowhere, sorry.
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Dec 16, 2016 03:55
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duz posted:You can take your coat off and put it in the cart. It's ok, I promise no one will laugh at you. I don't use a cart because they are a pain in the rear end and I have no reason to buy that much at once. They just poo poo up the aisles and get in everyone's way, and shopping takes five times longer because you can't squeeze around the slow-moving zombies that populate every grocery store. I don't know where these people get so much free time, because they've obviously got a gently caress sight more than I have if they can meander so slowly through the store. Edit: Speed arguments aside, using a basket also ensures that it's physically possible and not too difficult for me to actually bring my groceries back to my apartment, which is of course a necessary part of the shopping experience. PT6A fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 15:15
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You could buy a granny cart.
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Dec 16, 2016 16:07
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Why? Then I have another object taking up space in my apartment, which I have to bring to the store every time I go, all so I can use an unwieldy cart that I don't even need, only to solve a problem that wouldn't exist if they just lowered the thermostat in the store by 5 degrees or so (which would also save a lot of energy, because they wouldn't have to heat as much, and it would be easier to keep the chilled/frozen sections cold). My point is that grocery stores are awful and I hate them. In fact, shopping in general is terrible -- the only good part of it is that, at the end of the hellish process, you have likely (but not certainly) obtained the products you want or need.
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Dec 16, 2016 16:40
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Well speaking as someone who works in a store it's quite nice to have your workplace not be designed for winter attire on the inside. Also if you have to go to the store a lot because you can't carry more than one bag home you could go to the store less often if you got a cart and save your arms. This would seem to be desirable if you find shopping particularly aggrieving. You could also maybe unbutton your coat once you are inside the store and then re fasten it when you leave, thus allowing you a finer degree of thermoregulation. Also options: Take off your hat, take off your gloves, undo your scarf. Additionally, as a lifehack from someone who is really good at the shopping thing, if you don't know where a thing is, you can ask another person if they know where it is. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 16:49
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Mister Macys posted:It's called "Ohio". Oh did someone mention "rural" because I'm here to tell you about life in Montana and why you are totally not hardcore. I spent a lot of time in the rural poverty thread annoying people by questioning their definition of "rural". I wasn't just trying to be a troll, I was honestly confused about how people who lived in suburbs of 50,000 people 90 minutes outside of a city of two million people compared themselves isolated. When I was growing up in Oregon, everything from Minnesota eastwards was just considered generally "The East". Like, the entire idea of a place like Ohio, with several million plus cities, no wilderness, and very easy transportation to some of the world's most important cities being called "The Middle of Nowhere" is confusing to me. Ohio is in the middle of the US's population and industrial center. But how is that relevant to this thread? There are some people who discuss big box stores and the areas around them as something that happens in rural America, in sparsely populated areas, and look at them as in opposition to urban sophistication. But that is silly, because kind of by definition you can't have a big box story in a true rural area. There is some type of cultural ruralness to them, but they are suburban/exurban. You need a big population base to have big box stores. In Missoula, Montana, for example, there are two Wal-Mart superstores and a Cabelas, a Costco, a Borders, a Michaels, etc. Basically the full gamut of big box stores. Missoula has a population of around 100,000 metro and is the largest city in 200 miles one way and 300 miles the other way. I lived 40 miles south of Missoula. The town I was in was about 15,000 people, and was big enough to have a K-Mart, and an Ace Hardware store. It (by the desire of the residents) didn't have a Wal-Mart, and also didn't have the population for one. It also had "big box" style grocery stores. 20 miles south of my town was a town of 1,000 people, with a small independent grocery store. About 15 miles south of that, the last town had a combination convenience store/gas station/post office. Sorry to bore people with a rundown of Montana geography, but one of the differences that comes up for me is that while for many people, the entire concept of big box stores is about rural America and small towns without many options, from my experience, they are basically urban in their setting, although not urban culturally. There are still like three degrees of rurality below the type of places where you find Big Box stores.
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Dec 16, 2016 19:04
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Yeah you're mostly going to see a big box store in one of the red areas on this map: Those are the census blocks as of 2000 that were considered urbanized under the census rules, and they contain over 80% of the country's population. And that's with including relatively small development in the middle of nowhere as constituting urban areas a long as they can manage a certain swathe of density and between 2500 and 50,000 people. It also includes nearly all suburban development, because it does tend to be denser then people see at first glance - even some town where every lot has a minimum of an acre of land for a family home can have over 1500 people per square mile! And then keep in mind this map, where green indicates areas with 0 population as of 2010: 
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Dec 16, 2016 20:21
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Corning, Arkansas, a town with less than 4000 people, which is in a county with 16000 people, which is 30 miles away from the nearest town with a population of over 10000 and 50 miles away from the nearest town of over 50000 people has and supports a Walmart. There are plenty of Cornings out there.
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Dec 16, 2016 23:44
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A town of 4000 people surrounded by farms can support a Walmart, is my conclusion.
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Dec 16, 2016 23:46
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Corning, Arkansas, a town with less than 4000 people, which is in a county with 16000 people, which is 30 miles away from the nearest town with a population of over 10000 and 50 miles away from the nearest town of over 50000 people has and supports a Walmart. There are plenty of Cornings out there. Yeah, but I was talking about rural areas, not East Coast states like Arkansas. Okay, non-troll answer: Arkansas might be a different situation because Wal-Mart was founded there and many of those stores were probably pre-super center era. But I am not the expert on the geography of the US. But I do know that places in the East that would be considered tiny would be the biggest city for 50 miles in parts of the West.
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Dec 17, 2016 01:53
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glowing-fish posted:Oh did someone mention "rural" because I'm here to tell you about life in Montana and why you are totally not hardcore. Your rural gatekeeper gimmick is so weird. It is like the people in texas that have to get all huffy if someone says they are hot or people in new hampshire that have to step in to tell what real cold is every time someone in some other state calls something cold. Or the dumb claim that people who are being paid under the table at less than minimum wage really shouldn't complain because that isn't real poverty as long as they are making more than people in africa. Almost every metric is relative to local standards. If you start demanding absolutes then you aren't the most rural guy either, by a longshot. Only one place is every the hottest or coldest or poorest or most remote. It is absolutely okay for someone in alaska to say "it's hot today!" when it's 90 degrees, even if it's 115 in death valley. It's okay to not lecture the homeless guy that by owning a cell phone, a sleeping bag and a can of beans he has more wealth than nearly anyone on earth for most of human history. Or whatever. It's okay for people to talk about things in terms of local conditions. You live in an organized named town in an organized named state, if you were REALLY the most rural you'd live in some distant territory in barely surveyed land without internet, if only the most rural person imaginable can call themselves rural.
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Dec 17, 2016 05:27
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sit on my Facebook posted:I imagine that even if it were feasible, Amazon would probably rather the customer gently caress off and shop at home. Checkmate, bigboxailures https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011
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Dec 17, 2016 05:35
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Your rural gatekeeper gimmick is so weird. It is like the people in texas that have to get all huffy if someone says they are hot or people in new hampshire that have to step in to tell what real cold is every time someone in some other state calls something cold. Or the dumb claim that people who are being paid under the table at less than minimum wage really shouldn't complain because that isn't real poverty as long as they are making more than people in africa. Its not a gimmick, and its not weird. The difference is, I know that there are places more rural than where I've visited. Most people in Eastern states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Arkansas seem to be honestly unaware that wilderness areas and isolated areas exist. They do think that the difference in America is the difference between New York City and Dayton. I am the one who has said there are gigantic gradations, the Easterners are the ones who believe that the only choices are hipster city or dad city. Ohio is the 7th most populous state, and is the 10th most densely populated state. Starting in New York City, if you are driving across the country, Cleveland is 1/7th of the way across the country. Ohio might be slightly less urbanized and integrated into the transportation grid as New York State, but its not "The Middle of Nowhere" glowing-fish fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 16:59
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glowing-fish posted:Its not a gimmick, and its not weird. Listen, that isn't secret information you have, everyone knows that. No one is impressed, just like no one is impressed with people from arizona telling people in alaska that 90 isn't hot or people in maine telling people in florida that 28 isn't cold weather. It's okay for terms to be relative to local norms, you wouldn't even win the title rural anyway if only the most rural person could claim the award.
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Dec 17, 2016 17:35
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